Life on the Line

John Travolta is a line man, one of those guys you see in a hard helmet and red vest on power lines, doing something dangerous and obscure.... and the power running. Lives depend on that power, and he's got s pregnant niece, her boyfriend as his new, unobservant apprentice, and a storm on the way.

Watching this attempt to mythologize another form of Texas Hard Man in the aftermath of at least 86 Texans dying because their power grid went out last month.... well it interferes with the impulse; it's hard to print the legend with the facts still fresh in your mind. It's also startling to hear Travolta with a twang overlaying his usual accent, but to my untutored ears, he's pretty good, his face buried under a beard. If's a good updating of the standard western tropes. Perhaps when this year's events have faded, it will seem better.

The movie has SOME entertainment value to, at least, watch it once; for that I gave it a 3, but, oh my god....

I have read some of the reviews from some actual lineman that testify to how ridiculous this is. The soap opera aspects, the cliched dialog and circumstances that are delivered to us will make you cringe; this is just extremely lazy writing and film-making.

Yes, there is actually a character called "poke-chop", for crying out loud.

The lineman of this country deserve to be recognized, but not like this.

Feel good movie. Maybe not technically accurate but it is nice to see a move about people who work hard and are willing to risk their lives on a fairly regular basis doing a job that not everyone can do or is willing to even try. The bad reviews miss the point entirely. It is about hard work, sacrifice, personal pride and the love of a man for child and young woman. We need more moves that have a positive theme and make you feel good about your fellow man.

I was so looking forward to this film which is classified as an action/drama film. Mrs. Shullivan and I both worked for the local utility company and we are aware that the risk these lineman (line persons) take working on high voltage systems is real, is extremely dangerous and has led to some unfortunate and untimely deaths.

Life on the Line seems to portray all the lineman in this film as having personal demons, a group of hard drinking brothers, who appear to be standing in line waiting to get themselves killed in the line of duty. Even worse than the depressed characters of the main stars of this feature film were all the clichés that were used so often that I started gagging on my popcorn.

The film did hold my attention for the first half, but as more and more clichés were expressed by the so-called heroes, and the irritating caption at the bottom of the screen kept appearing with the countdown days to the day of the big storm, you had to know someone was going to lose their "Life on the Line" eh?

So the storm comes in more than just by the usual way (no spoiler here) and we see how when a life is lost a new generation of potential line persons are born. I don't think we have to worry about seeing a sequel to this film. Lights out....nothing more to report.

Obviously, none of the film crew and none of the actors as well understand what they were making. This is obviously soooooo wrong. I mean, they should have researched more before making this movie. I am sure all linesmen and those who are in the power generation, distribution, and transmission industry laughed sooo much they died right after watching this movie. This is so horrible and insulting to those who are in the industry. This is my first movie review by the way. I just thought that I might be able to spare other people's time from watching this horrible movie especially those who understand how electricity is being generated, distributed, and transmitted.